Podcasts

In the best of times, it’s a big job for leaders to demonstrate the kind of empathy that builds trust with their followers. Showing the kind of empathy that builds trust is even harder in this era of remote work and social distancing brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, says episode 99 guest Sean Martin, Ph.D., associate professor of business administration at the Darden School of Business at the  University of Virginia, Charlottesville, which hosts CUES’ CEO Institute III: Strategic Leadership Development. 

“People will choose to trust you to the extent that they believe that a) you have the skills to do a job (they can trust your abilities you have the technical know-how to do things), b) that you have the integrity that they can trust that you’re not going to tell them a lie; you’re not going to misrepresent things; you’re not going to ignore the truth and then c) trust in your benevolence, really trust that you actually have a sense of caring and concern and empathy for them,” explains Martin, who is among three highly-rated speakers presenting at Knowledge and Networking in November.

“To the extent that you have those three dimensions, … then we can say you are a trusted leader. That’s really hard to do virtually. It’s not impossible. But when we’re in a virtual environment, when people are not able to interact face to face or when we’re having interactions over the phone and all we can hear is each other’s voices, or we have to stay six feet apart or we’re all wearing masks … that presents a lot of challenges for how to we express empathy effectively; how do we show people how much we care. … Are we taking the time to really build relationships when people are distanced?”

Martin’s research involved how organizational and societal contexts affect leader-follower dynamics. He says COVID-19 has had “big general effects on leadership,” but also speaks to social class dynamics. 

“I think we’re waking up to the fact that a lot of the jobs that we rely on societally and even within an organization is done by people that we frequently—and I don’t think intentionally—… take for granted,” he explains. “We frequently assume that people will be there to bag our groceries. We assume that people will be there to work on manufacturing lines. We assume and take for granted that people will show up to do the actual production of goods and services that make our economy run. When something is taken for granted, I think we tend to not value it as highly.

“For a long time, we haven’t had a reason to as a society to wake up and realize the incredible value, skills, abilities and critically important roles that people (have) who often are not sitting at the very high end of an organizational hierarchy,” he continues. “When COVID hit and exposed a lot of these things, we are starting to realize that the people we really can’t afford to lose are the people who are making things and the people who are performing the face-to-face service. That’s the essential work. We need to start valuing that differently."

The show also gets into:

• Leadership lessons that can be learned from sports
• Why Dr. Martin likes to use sports in teaching leadership
• What is Dr. Martin’s favorite sport
• What Dr. Martin will present at his Knowledge and Networking in November session, titled  “Organizational Values: A Beacon in a Storm of Uncertainty”
• Dr. Martin’s paper that was featured on Comedy Central

The pandemic has accelerated trends that have long been underway, including consumer adoption of mobile services. That means that credit union leaders need to shift their thinking, possibly shifting their strategy for meeting and supporting digital demand.

“In order for them to manage and go forward with their physical and digital relationships, they’re going to need to change,” Kevin Blair says in this episode of the CUES Podcast. “Nothing will be quite the same as it was before the pandemic.”

In this show, Blair, president/CEO of CUES Supplier member NewGround, says that before the pandemic, surveys showed that 60% to 70% of consumers preferred coming to the branch to do their financial business. Now, a similar proportion says they prefer to interact with their financial services provider digitally. 

“What the pandemic did was accelerated it—it pushed the industry to the tipping point,” Blair emphasizes. (Learn more in the company's new whitepaper.

Interestingly though, this doesn’t mean credit union members will never want to enter a branch. On the contrary, research Blair cites in this episode says the first thing that consumers wanted to reopen was manufacturing. The second was their financial services provider. Blair thinks this means their top priority is jobs and then after that they want to attend to their financial business.

In the show, Blair provides a host of practical suggestions for how to make sure that your credit union’s physical locations respond to consumers’ concerns about sanitation and the prevention of disease transmission. These include sneeze guards, automatic door openers and motion-activated faucets. 

Blair emphasizes in the episode that credit union leaders need to keep their organization’s long-term strategy in mind.

“This too shall pass,” he says. “It’s not forever.” Physical sites are designed and implemented with a 20 to 30-year vision. They have some flex but they aren’t something you replace two years after establishing them. 

In addition to working on their actual digital delivery systems, credit unions need to be thinking about how to staff the support for digital delivery—he says it’s not unreasonable to think that teams doing digital delivery support could double or triple in size. And that begs the question about what kind of physical space will best help employees do this work.

The show also gets into:

• The member experience center of the future
• How members are more patient with branch service than with digital delivery
• Rebalancing delivery channels going forward
• Alignment of brand, place and culture
• Resetting strategy in the wake of the pandemic 

“The cloud brings a lot to the table when it comes to what you can offer your members,” Steve Comer says in this show.

That’s a key reason that credit unions are embracing the use of the cloud these days, explains Comer, director of financial services & insurance sales at Hyland Software Inc. Hyland OnBase is a CUESolutions provider for enterprise information systems and the sponsor of episode 97. Another key reason that credit unions are increasingly using the cloud is that the technology has matured and been proven over the years.

To clarify what is meant by the buzzword “cloud,” Comer provides a very succinct definition: It’s “somebody else’s computer.”

“You’re referring to servers, databases applications that are housed somewhere and accessed over the internet,” he explains, “so it’s just relieving an institution of the burden of carrying all that infrastructure in house.” 

Credit unions are adopting the cloud in many applications now, he says, because “they are very strategic in their thinking” and the cloud can help them make strategic moves.

For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic caused many credit unions to send their staff members home to work, credit unions that already were using the cloud found themselves with an advantage.

“Credit unions had to learn to operate with the remote workforce,” Comer explains in the show. “The ability to keep work processes going was suddenly reliant on mutual accessibility points that didn’t exist if you had a completely on-premise infrastructure.

“You have to be able to work with your co-workers” even when you’re working from home, Comer adds. “You have to be able to communicate with your members. You have to be able to share information. And, because of COVID, people were everywhere.”

This show also gets into:

• How cloud-based applications helped credit unions, especially those that were ready with cloud technology, participate in Paycheck Protection Program lending—by allowing them to share and access application materials, evaluate and distribute loans, and manage compliance requirements
• How cloud-based applications help with compliance monitoring and execution on new rules not just for PPP but in general
• How the cloud can help a credit union capture information that’s coming in and make its data processes more efficient
• What’s next for the cloud, which Comer says is likely to be part of practically every new technology

The job of board liaisons today is multi-faceted and evolving—and it’s a good idea for organizations to foster their development, according to Julia Patrick and Michael G. Daignealt, CCD, in episode 96 of the CUES Podcast.

“It really is proving to be a pivotal position, more so than I think a lot of people realize,” says Daigneault, CEO and co-founder of CUES strategic partner for governance, Quantum Governance, Vienna, Virginia. “The primary purpose of it is often thought of to support the board and support the committee. But I think it’s also to guide them … and make governance more effective.”

That guidance may be a factor in a credit union board becoming high performing rather than mediocre.

“Michael and I share a passion for how internal leadership can really help move an organization forward,” explains Patrick, CEO/co-founder of the American Nonprofit Academy, Phoenix. “That board liaison is oftentimes the centerpiece of an effective board versus maybe a not-so-effective board.”

What are some key responsibilities of board liaisons?

“There’s a lot of issues that go from compliance to recording to all of the different things that have to be stored during official meetings,” Patrick answers. “They’re tracking things through their board portals. They’re actually navigating things that have a fiduciary responsibility as well as keeping the culture of the organization and … (supporting) communication.”

Daigneault echoes those thoughts, noting that because board liaisons are so connected to the board chair, the CEO, directors, committee chairs and committee members, they’re often good glue for holding everything together. They also provide a really important resource for the continuing education of board and committee members, he adds.

Patrick and Daigneault will co-lead Board Liaison Workshop this September. When the two led a previous CUES in-person event for board liaisons, they asked what participants most wanted to learn. The board liaisons cited such things as:

• How do we support board member engagement?
• How do we facilitate the board packets more effectively?
• How do we do the minutes right, rather than just taking down everything that is said?
• How do we help the senior team and the board shepherd the strategy process even more effectively?

Attendees also expressed a desire to continue evolving the role of board liaison.

“There is a desire for the board liaison to have a stronger voice and to be seen in the C-suite as a very important part of a successful operation and not just a clerical role,” Patrick explains in the show. “To understand that this is a trained, professional piece of someone’s job description, that’s somewhat of a new conversation.”

Daigneault adds that the job of the board liaison is “a multi-faceted role, which is morphing and evolving and becoming more professional day by day.”

The show also gets into:

• What surprises executives and board liaisons themselves about the evolving role of the board liaison
• Why board liaisons sometimes feel alone in their jobs
• The special role of board liaisons when governance is being conducted virtually
• How the Board Liaison Workshop and other CUES board liaison offerings are fostering a network of these professionals who can connect with and learn from each other
• What Daigneault and Patrick bring to their presentations at the Board Liaison Workshop—high-level perspective on strategic governance plus tools for succeeding with the nuts and bolts of&

In this episode, James Robert Lay tells the story of how the CEO of Tower Records once said that kids “would always” want to come into the stores and listen to music.

But Tower Records went out of business in 2006.

“Music was digitized,” explains Lay, the author of a new book, Banking on Digital Growth and an instructor for CUES School of Strategic Marketing, slated for September. “We went from the record to the eight-track to the cassette, to the CD, to mp3, but we’re not done yet. Because what is music now? Music is now streaming with Spotify and Pandora.”

Financial institutions are seeing a parallel shift. “What we’re seeing is the explosion of fintech and what fintech is focused on is—like music—micro niche markets, or micro problems and, for credit unions, it’s like death by a thousand cuts,” Lay explains. 

In the show, Lay gives a formal definition for digital growth as “a systematic process centered around the modern consumer journey” and notes that digital growth is built on three goals:

1. Increasing traffic to a financial brand’s website
2. Generating leads from the website traffic
3. Converting those leads into loans and deposits

“The way we have to do this is by positioning the credit union beyond the commoditized great rates and amazing service and look-alike laundry list of amazing features that every other financial brand promotes,” he emphasizes.

Lay explains that digital growth is not about mobile banking, remote deposit capture or social media—those are tactics.

“Digital growth is about acquisition,” he says.

The show also gets into:

• How the pandemic has impacted digital delivery
• How the pandemic has impacted credit unions’ digital growth strategies
• Roadblocks to digital growth
• Exiting the circle of chaos to move onto your next great opportunity
• The shift from digital delivery supporting a branch-first strategy to branches supporting a digital-first strategy
• How training and education build clarity around the digital consumer buying journey
• An update on the CUES School of Strategic Marketing